Intellectual property

Intellectual property is protected by international Treaties and Conventions. The World Intellectual Property Organization provides the following definition:

"Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce.

IP is divided into two categories: Industrial property, which includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications of source; and Copyright, which includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, artistic works such as drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures, and architectural designs. Rights related to copyright include those of performing artists in their performances, producers of phonograms in their recordings, and those of broadcasters in their radio and television programs".

The most important Treaties and Conventions in the field of Intellectual property are:

• the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (1886);
• the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property (1883);
• the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks (1891) and the Protocol relating to that Agreement (1989);

To be protected, certain creations need to be registered. This is always the case with inventions, which require a patent registration to grant its owner exclusive rights of exploitation. It is also the case with trademarks and industrial designs, even if in Common Law countries some level of protection is conferred without registration.

Copyright

Article 2 of Berne Convention gives a list of work susceptible to receive copyright protection:

“The expression ‘literary and artistic works’ shall include every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression, such as books, pamphlets and other writings; lectures, addresses, sermons and other works of the same nature; dramatic or dramatico-musical works; choreographic works and entertainments in dumb show; musical compositions with or without words; cinematographic works to which are assimilated works expressed by a process analogous to cinematography; works of drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, engraving and lithography; photographic works, to which are assimilated works expressed by a process analogous to photography; works of applied art; illustrations, maps, plans, sketches and three-dimensional works relative to geography, topography, architecture or science. Translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other alterations of a literary or artistic work shall be protected as original works without prejudice to the copyright in the original work. Collections of literary or artistic works such as encyclopaedias and anthologies which, by reason of the selection and arrangement of their contents, constitute intellectual creations shall be protected as such, without prejudice to the copyright in each of the works forming part of such collections.”

It can thus be seen that copyright applies to “every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression.” The expression “literary and artistic works” is a general concept to be understood, for the purposes of copyright protection, as including every original work of authorship, irrespective of its literary or artistic merit.

Countries which are members of the Berne Convention and many other countries provide protection under their copyright laws to the categories of works contained in the preceding list.

Copyright does not depend on an official registration. All creations are protected by copyright as soon as they exist. According to the Berne Convention, literary and artistic works are protected without any formalities in the countries party to that Convention.

MAS LEGAL provides My©Box registration service and acts as a trusted third party to provide prima facie evidence in a court of law with reference to disputes relating to copyright.

Software law

Computer programs are not included in the Berne Convention list, but are undoubtedly included in the notion of a “production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain” within the meaning of Article 2 of the Convention. Computer programs are indeed protected under the copyright laws of a number of countries, including the USA and the EU.